Party faithful of Reform UK were gathered in Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre on September 5th, 2025, when news filtered through that the UK’s then-deputy prime minister, Labour’s Angela Rayner, had quit. How they cheered that day.
On Monday afternoon, as they flooded into the same NEC hall for yet another rambunctious rally, imbued with the same bullish sense that their time is coming, the Reform members had an acute sense of deja vu.
Last time it was Rayner whose political demise roused their spirits. This time, there seemed to be a real chance it might be the turn of Labour prime minister Keir Starmer, who at that precise moment was fighting for his political life in London.
In the end, Starmer seemed likely to survive another day, if not many more than that. But for the Reform crowd, the prime minister’s fate could wait. They were too busy feting the man they see as a future prime minister of their own. As ever, party leader Nigel Farage lapped up the adulation.
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It was a modest rally by Reform’s recent standards. About 2,500 queued for the NEC hall. The rally was organised at short notice, days before Starmer’s administration entered the acute stages of what feels like a death spiral over Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. Yet if there was an over-arching point to the Reform gathering, beyond inserting Farage into the news cycle, it wasn’t immediately apparent.
There was no significant announcement, no big reveal, no new former Tory defector to swell the ranks. This was simply a rally to gee up the troops, a Farage and Reform version of the big tent meetings US president Donald Trump perfected as he built his Maga movement.
The Trumpian vibes were amped up by the master of ceremonies, broadcaster Jeremy Kyle. Over and over, he publicly taunted journalists covering the event, just as Trump has done at his rallies.
“Don’t fall up the stairs, idiot,” said the charming Kyle into his microphone as he addressed a random journalist near the stage. The crowd lapped it up and eventually joined in. One Reform member approached The Irish Times and asked if they could sit in the media section, “along with the rest of the fake news”.
Kyle gave soft interviews to Reform’s MPs apart from Farage. Deputy leader Richard Tice said the party was targeting control of Birmingham’s local council, the biggest local authority in Europe, in May elections. A bin strike started in this city 14 months ago and has yet to be fully resolved. Reform’s aspirations are not beyond the pale, even in a city that is 30 per cent Muslim.
Eventually, Farage took to the stage to announce he would name his front bench “in a few days”. So why was everybody there?
He held an impromptu press conference, where members of the media had to ask their questions in front of the crowd, while identifying their organisation. It was pure theatre, Maga style. GB News was cheered while the BBC was, predictably, booed.
One journalist asked about Robert Jenrick’s infamous comments last year that he didn’t see enough “white faces” in Birmingham. At that, Farage cut the press conference short.
Afterwards, some of the crowd decamped to the local Wetherspoons. A friendly older woman approached to chat. She said her husband, who had never been political before, had decided to run as a Reform councillor in Sandwell, a nearby borough.
What did she think Reform could achieve?
“We want to give our grandchildren a country to be proud of,” she said. “My son was a squaddie. They are all treated terribly by Labour. We want Starmer out.”
Even if Labour resolves its internal difficulties, bigger battles lie ahead for the party.
